News

Johns Hopkins Taps Localist Platform for 'Social Calendaring'

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/19/09

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has added a branded interactive events calendar to its Web site with the help of Localist. The new calendar allows the campus community to promote both local events and internal university events and allows students to see what activities others are attending in real time and share and discuss their social plans with other students.

A recent perusal of events at the 6,200-student campus included invitations to watch the television series Gossip Girl with the sisters of Alpha Phi, attend a general assembly with the Public Health Student Forum, and shop at the local community farmers market.

The Localist platform also monitors a student's interests in order to custom-tailor recommendations of events to attend and new places to visit.

"Every university has an events calendar, but, until now, no university has [had] a great events calendar that ties into the tools that students are already using," said Tim Windsor, director of Web strategy. "That's why I was excited at the opportunity to work with Localist to build a solution for Johns Hopkins that not only is simple to manage but plugs seamlessly into Facebook, Google Calendar, and iCal on the Mac and iPhone... There's nothing else out there that offers a better solution for higher education events calendars."

In addition to the calendar functionality provided by the core Localist platform, the company has also developed features specifically for student groups to organize and share events with their members and interested students.